1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to devices and apparatuses for assisting males in urination.
2. Background Information
Urination can be difficult, messy, and (under circumstances requiring assistance) embarrassing when one cannot use a conventional toilet facility in the conventional manner. All of these factors are greatly amplified when the individual is, for example, a male in his teens, who is bed-ridden because of an accident and is tended (as still is normally the case) by female care givers.
The subject invention arose from a situation involving a boy in his early teens who, after a tragic accident, was bed ridden in a body cast for an extended period of time. For a time, urination was something he avoided until he could avoid it no longer. Having to receive assistance from his female relatives (the only ones usually available for his care) was excruciatingly embarrassing for this young patient.
The boys parents looked in vane for some device or system which would allow their son to urinate without direct assistance. Nothing effective could be found, even when involving the resources and ideas of fellow staff members at the hospital where the boy's mother (and the present inventor) worked.
The primary problem thus far unaddressed by the urinary devices and systems of the prior art relate to allowing a boy or man to urinate while lying substantially on his back, but without having any back flow through whatever tubing or conduit is involved in receiving the urine. Of course, the use of conventional bed pans is virtually out of the question for such a patient, so literal ability to use is beyond the realm of a mere “problem” with such conventional approaches.
Additional deficiencies in the prior art devices and systems relate to ease of managing the collection and disposal of urine. Male urinals, as they are known, are usually unitary structures which, essentially, are receptacles with an opening (sometimes which an short conduit extending from one margin). Therefore contrary to OSHA and other applicable regulations, the urinal is often placed on a nearby table, or on the bed beside the patient immediately after use.
In addition, the bulk of such devices as were just described is such that they cannot be maneuvered into place when dealing with restrictive casts, braces, etc. Situations such as this often require that a patient resort to the use of adult diapers.
It would be highly beneficial, and, not to exaggerate to any real degree, outright humane to provide an improved male urinary device or system which allowed a male patient to urinate without assistance, to provide for effective collection of urine without significant back flow, to address the objective of collecting urine remotely from the patient, table surfaces or the bed itself.